How to Sleep Like a Caveman : Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night's Rest

Sapiens meets Why We Sleep in an evolutionary romp through the science of sleepand how we can get better restby one of the worlds leading sleep scientists.

We spend roughly a third of our lives in bed, but for millions of us, not all of that time is spent sleeping. We strive for eight hours per night, only to lie awake thanks to stress, our ever-present devices, a new baby, or that 4pm coffee you thought you needed.

As sleep scientist and recovering insomniac Merijn van de Laar shows, were hardly the first to experience this. Whenhomo sapiensevolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when saber-toothed tigers were their biggest nighttime worry, wakefulness served to protect ones tribe at night. Research shows these episodic sleep patterns even gave our ancestors an evolutionary advantage. We can look to their example for guidance in improving our sleep health, too: how our sleep patterns change as we age, the benefits of communal sleep, the importance of environmental factors such as temperature and light. While our myriad gadgets may distinguish us from early humans, understanding the ways our brains evolved to rest can chart the course toward a better nights sleep.

Drawing from emerging science, archeological research into our ancestors habits, and close observation of contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures,How to Sleep Like a Cavemanexplains everything from why we sometimes jerk awake at nightlikely a remnant of having slept in treesto why our efforts to optimize our sleep schedules might just be a fools errand. The result is a surprising, accessible new framework for thinking about sleepthe way we were designed to.